Stefan Collini

Britain’s​ ‘world-leading’ university system is in deep trouble. There are, inevitably, conflicting diagnoses of the malady, but the indicators of deteriorating health are too ubiquitous to be ignored. When a substantial number of universities are in serious financial jeopardy, with some hinting at possible bankruptcy in the short term (according to the Office for Students,...

Humankind,​ he told us himself, ‘cannot bear very much reality’. One way to escape having to confront that disagreeable element was to go into hiding. For much of the second half of his life, T.S. Eliot was a man on the run, retreating to actual or symbolic boltholes, wearing a succession of masks, relying on routine to help him escape detection – even, it sometimes seemed,...

Biographies​ of scholars often struggle to do justice to their subjects’ scholarship. Describing the slow, patient exploration of evidence and the stuttering formulation of interpretations need not be as exciting as watching paint dry, but scholarship remains an activity that is hard to communicate and nigh impossible to render in dramatic terms. The temptation is strong to concentrate...

When​ did the ‘modern’ era begin? For the European imagination across more than a millennium, the most significant divide was between antiquity and what followed, such that for some centuries ‘modern history’ was held to have begun with the fall of Rome. Applying a different filter, the category of the ‘Middle Ages’ indicated the post-Renaissance sense of...

Every so often​, a periodical comes along that sets the pace for a number of years thanks to the decisiveness of its editorial direction and the quality of its contributions. In 1855 the arrival of a new weekly journal represented one such transformative moment. The Saturday Review addressed itself to ‘serious, thoughtful men of all schools, classes and principles’,...